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Posts tagged ‘racists’

In Howard Kurtz’s April 2nd piece (worth a read) about how the conservative media is having a difficult time warming up to Mitt Romney, Rich Lowry (editor of conservative magazine National Review) made a statement I found to be refreshingly honest about the way they view the Obama presidency. Lowry said:

“There’s no question it would be better for everyone’s place in the marketplace to have another Obama term.”

Rich Lowry.

And that’s it. That’s the strength of the conservative media: they’re capitalizing on, and making their money by, trashing a president millions of Americans found repulsive from the day he entered national politics. The job of any media organization is to secure a place for itself in the marketplace. Putting forth ideas and principles is one thing, but the main objective of these media organizations is to make a profit. There are many ways to do that, but Lowry hits on something important here: he would make more money with a second Obama term than he would if Romney (or Santorum [Ha!]) wins.

Why is that?

This is an example of terrorism, apparently.

There is a strain of people in American society who so hate this president that they will devour anything negative said about him. They hate him not for his policies, but simply because of who (or to them, what) he is. Sure, now many of the people who hate Obama point to his “failed policies” or his attack on their freedom or his “Chicago style politics” or other such nonsensical talking points, but this anti-Obama hatred pre-dated his presidency. The irrational hate always existed. He’s a Muslim, he wasn’t born here, he “pals around with terrorists,” he has a radical pastor, he’s a communist, he reads from a teleprompter, Barack HUSSEIN Obama, or the most remarkable and straightforward one: the terrorist fist jab. Whatever the impetus behind that irrationality was, it’s myriad. One aspect of that irrationality, however, is impossible to deny: some, if not much, of the resistance to Obama is due to his race. That’s not to say all conservatives or Republicans are racist, and it’s not to say that all opposition to Obama is at its core racist. Those things are not true. However, it is myopic to deny there are still millions of racists in this country and to deny that they all have a special hate for this black president. If Barack Obama were white, there is no way on the planet that anyone would have thought a “fist bump” was a “terrorist fist jab.” There’s no way that would have happened.

This is just Christmas, apparently.

Given this groundswell of antipathy, some of it racially based, some of it policy based and some of it based in fear, it would have been stupid for conservative websites and conservative politicians not to attempt to capitalize on it.

Very quickly, the conservative media (mirrored by actual politicians in Washington) realized that as long as they disagreed President Obama and attacked everything the president did and everything he said, there was going to be a large part of the population who would support them. These people may not have been in the mainstream, but for internet sites, you don’t need to be part of the mainstream to be able to click on a few links and drive ad revenue. In this case, the fringe is large enough to support the conservative media because the fringe is so incensed with the idea of an Obama presidency. As long as these conservative websites keep up a daily attack on Obama and all of his surrogates, and as long as they don’t alienate the more moderate part of their conservative readership by being openly racist, they will make money. They will generate hits. They’ll be relevant.

So it’s not a surprise that there is unanimity in the conservative media against this president. It’s very easy to play to the fringe by keeping up a constant attack and playing to the most vile aspects of our American politics. Far right conservative websites have grown remarkably over the last few years. The Daily Caller was founded in the middle of this presidency. The Breitbart sites have exploded. The Blaze is brand new.

And all of it is built on one premise: hate the president, make money. Hating Obama isn’t just politics for them; it’s a business.

“There’s no question it would be better for everyone’s place in the marketplace to have another Obama term.”

“Entering the third week of wall-to-wallTrayvon Martin coverage, the narrative has emerged that there is a left vs. right dynamic to the way this story has been covered. Indeed, I have traced the way some online conservatives (particularly The Daily Caller) have turned against Trayvon Martin, in my view as an expression of their hatred of President Obama. But is this really a left versus right thing? I looked at the Trayvon Martin coverage by conservative media like Fox News, The Blaze, The Bigs, and Hot Air, and found a complicated picture.”

The picture may look complicated to the writer of this article (Tommy Christopher), but if you really want to know what’s going on in this case, look into the comment sections of those five sites he lists.

It’s the most vile, racist, and disgusting stuff you’re ever going to see, and the right wing sites who host those comments turn a blind eye to it. I think Christopher does a good job in explaining how those sites (and FNC) have covered the issue, but the failure of these right wing organizations to call out their commenters for their insane racism is an important part of this equation. Those sites know they can’t call for a stop to the racism because they know that many of their readers and supporters are unabashed bigots.